Books by Rey (Duke University) Chow

Rey Chow rearticulates the plight of the humanities in the age of global finance and neoliberal mores through a focus on Foucault's concept "outside." She foregrounds a nonutilitarian approach, stressing anew the intellectual and pedagogical objectives fundamental to humanistic inquiry.

What is the sentimental? How can we understand it by way of the visual and narrative modes of signification specific to cinema and through the manners of social interaction and collective imagining specific to a particular culture in transition? This book explores these questions through contemporary Chinese directors.

In late-capitalist Western society, cross-ethnic cultural transactions are an inevitable daily routine. This work explores the vicissitudes of cross-ethnic representational politics in a diverse range of texts across multiple genres, including the writings of Georg Lukacs, Michel Foucault, Max Weber, Jacques Derrida, and Fredric Jameson.

Chow situates contemporary Chinese film within the broad context of Chinese history and culture, giving readers a glimpse of the unique shared identity that characterizes the current crop of outstanding filmmakers, such as Chen Kaige and Zhang Yimou.